There never seems to be enough places to store things in a neat and tidy manner in the house! Why not make some storage containers of your own that are easy and cheap to do, look amazing and recycling old materials? These wicker look storage containers are perfect for storing bathroom essentials, bits and bibs in bedrooms or in hallways for items that need to be kept to hand.
What you need:
- Cardboard boxes – ideally around 25cm in length. They can be square or rectangular. If you wish to make a stand with the storage boxes you will need three boxes of the same size.
- A ball of brown string /jute twine
- A glue gun
- A craft knife and a sharp pair of Scissors (you can just use Scissors but a craft knife is easier for certain parts).
- 4x straight bamboo sticks or something similar around 1m tall
- A ruler and pencil
How to make
- First of all, take one of your cardboard boxes, and carefully cut the top flaps off all the way round, so that you are left with an open box. Using your craft knife, cut the corners up to the bottom of the box, so that your box is laid out flat in a cross shape and the walls of the box are flat.
- Take your pencil and ruler, and measure 3cm from the edge of one of the walls along the long edge. Mark it, and draw a line towards the bottom pieces of card. Continue along the edge so that there is a line draw every 3cm and repeat on all the wall pieces of the box.
- Carefully with your craft knife, make a cut along those lines, so that you are not cutting them off, but creating a slit. Do this so all of the wall pieces have flaps on them measuring 3cm wide.
- Now take your jute twine, unravel some of it and put some glue on the end. Go to one of the corners, to the bottom part and glue a small amount of the twine to the inside of one of the flaps. You only need to glue the first part so that it doesn’t unravel. You could tie it around the flap instead and hide the knot but gluing will probably be less obvious. Now from this point, weave the twine in and out of the flaps, all the way around the bottom. When you have gone all the way round once, go around again but slightly higher than the first round. Continue in this way, making sure that each time you go round, the new layer is touching the one underneath, so that you can’t really see much of the cardboard. Keep going until you get right to the top of the layers, and can’t go round anymore. Cut off the loose twine and glue down the end on the cardboard.
- You can still see the cardboard at the top of the box, which is the ends of the slits. To cover this, take some of the twine that is left. Measure the perimeter of your box, and cut three pieces of twine that measure just a few cm more than this. Tie the three pieces together at one end, and start to plait the three strands together. When you get near the end, tie the pieces together to stop the plait. Take the plait and glue all the way round the top of the box, sticking the plait so that the top edge of the box is completely covered and no cardboard can be seen. If you wish to make a stack of them, make two more storage boxes in the same way.
- Take your bamboo sticks and twine. Start at one end of the one piece of bamboo and glue some twine around the top. Then, continue to wrap the twine all the way around until you get to the bottom. Then, glue it in place. Do this for the other three sticks of bamboo. When you have your four sticks all twined, using your glue gun, glue the sticks one on each corner of one of the boxes at the bottom of the sticks. Then, glue another one on the four corners part way up and one more at the top. You now have your storage stack ready to go. If you wish, you could place a nice piece of fabric in the insides of each box so that the bottoms of the boxes are protected, particularly if you are using it in a bathroom. Fill your boxes carefully, ensuring you do not put too much in them and enjoy!
